GRAHAM Henry found peace coaching the All Blacks to a 2011 World Cup win, but a new autobiography has broken the calm. He talks to Iain Payten.

New Zealand have held the Bledisloe Cup for so long now, is it still important for the All Blacks?

It is the biggest trophy we play for, apart from the Rugby World Cup obviously. The boys view it that way. Because Australia held it for four or five years in the late 90s and early 2000s, these guys grew up with that.

So you never experience any trouble motivating the team despite it seeming like you had the wood on the Wallabies for many years?

No, and you ask the All Black players, you’d get an identical answer. That value that trophy very, very highly.

Are you surprised New Zealand is now knocking on the door of ten straight years holding the Bledisloe Cup?

The last four years have been coaching against Robbie Deans. What about your relationship with Deans? Do you have a fierce rivalry?

I don’t think there is any greater rivalry between me and Robbie than against anyone else I coached against. It was just beat-up in the media. It was just because I got the job in 2007 to coach the All Blacks, and that divided a nation. People thought Robbie should have been appointed and that’s fair and reasonable. I had no problem with that. I thought he was going to get appointed as well. But there is no greater rivalry between me and him, no.

What about your personal relationship?

It is just a normal relationship when one guy is coaching an international team and another guy is coaching an international team. We get on fine. I think there is a mutual respect there. We just get on with it.

When you were coaching against the Wallabies, what were your main areas of focus? Were did you think you had it over them? Was it a psychological edge?

I don’t think I should talk to you about this. I don’t think it is the right thing to do. My heart is with the All Blacks, and I certainly don’t wish to give the opposition an opportunity or any pointers. I’ll leave it with the fact it is the most important trophy the All Blacks play for every year, above the Tri-Nations trophy or more important than a Grand Slam tour.

Is the current Wallaby team a serious threat to New Zealand?

That’s why the All Blacks played so well (in the RWC semi-final), because they respect the Wallaby team. They respect Robbie and respect the team, and if they didn’t do that they wouldn’t play nearly as well against Australia. The same will apply this week, I am sure. It’s little brother playing big brother. That’s motivational for the All Blacks. Australia is probably most successful sporting nation in the world, per capita. And there is a respect for that in this country. Australia has won two Rugby World Cups, and when these guys grew up, the Wallabies were the best team in the world. Those memories don’t die easily. We as a team respected what Genia, Cooper, O’Connor could do against you, because they are a very potent attacking team when they get things right.

Quade Cooper received plenty of heat at the World Cup last year and you also saw him as a “glaring weakness” in the semi-final. What are your thoughts on Cooper?

He’s a talent. There’s no doubt about he’s a talent we respected. I don’t think he did himself any favours. I was asked questions about how the New Zealand public related to Quade Cooper at the RWC, and they were probably quite demanding of him. They put some attention on him. But he drew that attention on himself, that’s all I said to the media. I said the attention Quade Cooper got was self-inflicted really. He was involved in a couple of cheap shots on McCaw in previous Test matches, one in Hong Kong and one in Brisbane. You can’t do those things and expect nothing is going to result from that. Secondly, the positional switch (from no.10 to no.15) in attack and defence (in the semi-final) was the Wallaby team’s weakness.

In your mind does it diminish the talent of players if they don’t play fairly as well?

Those sort of incidents put Quade under pressure at the Rugby World Cup. He either had to come up and handle that or not. And he didn’t. I think that’s a fair summary. I am not saying he’s not a gifted player, he has some remarkable gifts as a rugby player. But if you get involved in cheap shots, you have to be man enough to handle the consequences.

All Blacks captain Richie McCaw, left, and coach Graham Henry wave to supporters during a parade through Auckland's central business district to celebrate their Rugby World Cup victory in New Zealand.Source: AP

Where do you think Richie McCaw will rank in the history books in terms of great All Black players?

He will be no.1, probably. He is in top echelon of All Black players over 110 years, there’s no doubt about that. He is the first person to play a century of games for the All Blacks, he’s captained them over 60 times. His personal hit rate as a captain must be close to 90 per cent. It’s unbelievable. Apart from that he’s an inspiration to the guys he leads. He puts himself out there all the time. If any player needed a drip after the final, he was playing on one leg. It looked like he needed to go to hospital. He is a very special New Zealander.

Do you think he feeds off the publicity he gets in rival countries for, shall we say, his “effectiveness at the breakdown”?

Of course he did. What rival nations were saying about him was motivation for the All Blacks. It’s great. Just keep it coming. That’s orchaestrated. It’s quite frankly getting a bit boring too. You’d think they’d have a change of tactic.

The All Black team you coached was one of the most successful teams of all-time. Despite all those trophies and wins you were going to be judged solely on the 2011 World Cup … given good coaches prepare for all possibilities, did you think about life after it should you not win it?

No. No, you don’t. You are so involved in what you are doing. That’s probably a wee bit of a stretch, maybe you have the odd flash from time to time in your mind. But no, you’re so involved in the process of trying to help a group of people produce the ultimate, and all the bits and pieces of the jig-saw puzzle that go into it, that you just don’t go down there. When you have done it for so long you train yourself not to dwell on the negative.

It does cross my mind in the box, in the final. It did cross my mind there for a few seconds: “What the hell is going to happen if we lose this thing?” Because I’d been through that experience before, and it’s not easy. It is not easy for the people who are close to you. My mother is still alive and its not easy for her. I have been married for 42 years and it’s not easy for her, and nor for our kids. So it’s not an easy sitiuation to handle if you don’t win it, particularly when you are expected to do so. When the expectation is such that the whole of New Zealand expects you to win it, and so do a lot of rugby people around the world, there is a wee bit of expectation there. Generally you don’t go down there but it did flash for a fleeting moment near the end of the final.

I’d suggest you weren’t alone in New Zealand. On World Cups, your comments about Wayne Barnes (the referee in New Zealand’s 2007 quarter-final loss to France) have made headlines around the world. Did you anticipate that? What has been your reaction?

When you are writing it, you just write the facts, you know? As you can see in the book, I had actually kept a record of my analysis on that game, which was put into the book verbatim. It is just a fact that you dealt with at the time. The facts were that I felt there was a possibility there was match-fixing and sports betting in that game. When the book is released and it causes a bit of interest, I was quite surprised by the extent of the interest. Maybe I am a bit naïve about that. But as I have said to people, if you are going to write an autobiography, it can’t be fairytales. It has to be the truth. It has to be fact. That’s what I did. When you are the coach of an international sporting team, you analyse something totally. It is a complete disection of the game. I did that in Hervery Bay in Australia. Raewyn and I went there to escape for a few weeks when the heat was on over here. I had to write the report for New Zealand rugby and had to analyse the game. When I analysed it, I was just amazed. I was shocked at what I was watching. It was my frame of reference, which is different to everyone else in the world, even the All Blacks management at the time. They’re not where the buck stops, I am where the buck stops. Nobody views that game from the same frame of reference as what I do.

Coaches learn to expect variation in refereeing performance. Did you feel that game fell well outside the regular margins for error?

I have spoken about this topic a bit since the book came out, so I did a wee bit of research on it. I had coached about 250 games of first-class rugby, Auckland, the Blues, Wales and the All Blacks. And 249 games you could understand. The 250th you just couldn’t. It was just a bizarre game of football. Our KPIs in a game in France a few months prior to that were not as good and yet we won that game by 40-odd points. We attacked for over 70% of the time in the second half and didn’t get a penalty. That’s almost the definition of impossibility.

Did the experience of 2007 play a role in the 2011 campaign and how you prepared for it, and dealt with the big shocks that came during the tournament as well?

Oh hell yeah … one of the biggest strategies we had was something unexpected is going to happen in 2011. We just have to suck it up and handle it. We just have to handle the unexpected. The unexpected came in the form of injuries, really. Injury to Dan Carter, and then Colin Slade and Aaron Cruden. Our first three fly-halfs all injured. Obviously losing Daniel was huge, but we had talked about that. The unexpected is going to handle it, if you don’t handle it you won’t win the thing. Richie McCaw breaking his foot and playing on in the last three games was amazing. Because we had gone through a situation we didn’t handle, with the referee in 2007, it was a major positive for us preparing for the 2011 World Cup.

Briefly on the injury curse of 2011 RWC, what was the first thought in your mind when you saw Carter prone on the ground at training?

I was there obviously, when I saw it I knew it was a major thing. I knew he was out of the tournament. But again, because we had talked about the unexpected was going to happen, we had to handle it. That’s what we did. I talked to the troops pretty much straight after the incident, and said: “This is the challenge we have been talking about for the last two years. Let’s bind together and handle this thing, and have total belief for the guys who are going to take Daniel’s place.” It just happened Slade got injured in the next game. I had to repeat the story a couple of times.

You have joked about how you would have to had to go live in France if you didn’t win the World Cup last year. Was 2011 a year that changed your life? Will you look back on it as the defining one?

Oh hell yes. It was really the ruling off, everything came together and you can live in peace. I have been involved in a dozen years of international rugby, which I don’t think anyone else has done that, and 140 Test matches, which is a hell of a lot. It was a good way of finishing. It was always the objective. It was always the objective, so to fulfil the objecive was special for a number of people. For me it was a ruling off since coaching the game since 1974. I’d had a team every year since 1974. It is probably a sign of madness really.

Have you found yourself wandering past an oval tempted to go and bark orders at a club side or anything?

I am still involved, doing coach mentoring (in New Zealand rugby and high performance sport) and I am involved with the Argentinians. Also in a coach mentoring role. It’s great.

Was the process of writing an autobiography cathartic?

I had done it before. Prior to my move to Wales in 1998, Bob Howtt, the same author, and I wrote a book called the x-factor. An arrogant title. IT came out when I was in Wales later 1999. It was very successful actually. It sold 43,000 copies, and 30,000 of those were in the UK, mostly in Wales, because they’re just fanatical. Bob would come around to my place at about 5am, so he had to change his lifestyle a bit. I am early riser. We would just sit and talk for three or four hours, for three or four times a week. He would write a summary and then email me that. I would add and delete

How good was your memory?

Some of it was in almanacs, some of it was memory. I checked some information. Evety year you have to write an All Black report for the NZRU, an annual review. The manager would write a report, and all the coaches, and maybe a dozen random players were interviewed by the NZRU. I had access to those reports.

I have read you were determined to be honest?

If you are going to write an autobiography, my belief is you write the facts. I have done that. It is a factual statement about 35 years in rugby really. It’s warts and all.

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